When Suzanne Miller started teaching kindergarden 15 years ago kids only needed to know 13 letters before they moved onto the first grade.

Now, at 5 years old, they’re expected to read, said said Miller, a teacher at Mountain View School in Claremont.

“There is so much focus on standarized testing and that seems to be the end all be all,” she said.

“Most can read by the end of the year. They’ve picked it up pretty well, but the tradeoff is they’re not painting and playing blocks – and that takes away from their fine motor development skills and their outlet onto creativity.”

Miller’s frustrations began with the approval of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

The legislation fundamentally changed teaching and education in U.S. schools by requiring annual testing of school children and “adequate yearly progress” for every subgroup of students.

The act also requires schools to provide after-school tutoring and other services for poor-performing students and mandates that schools hire only “highly qualified” teachers.

In a study, “Does the No Child Left Behind Act Help or Hinder K-12 Education?” released by UCR on Tuesday, the authors surveyed 740 national board certified teachers in California to assess the effectiveness and unintended consequences of NCLB.

They found that 84 percent reported overall unfavorable attitudes about the act.

Congress approved the legislation in 2001, increasing federal funding for education while at the same time tying continued support to improvements in individual student outcomes.

Under the act, individual states became responsible for creating their own performance standards, and through standardized testing, with the goal that 100 percent of students would meet the standards within the next 12 years.

The researchers – Patrick Guggino, who earned his Ph.D. in education from UCR in 2008, and Steven Brint, professor of sociology – conducted an online survey in 2007 of educators who are National Board-certified teachers.

Guggino and Brint asked these teachers to assess the impact of NCLB in three areas of professionalism – technical areas of practice, the service ethic of teaching and professional commitment.

Among their findings:

61 percent said the act created an overly narrow conception of the meaning of education

46 percent felt it diminished creativity

59 percent said it had unintended consequences, primarily less creativity in the classroom and increased influence of textbook companies to determine the content and pace of instruction.

One in four teachers surveyed said the act helped them improve as instructors. Another one in four said the act had lowered their commitment and loyalty to the profession, and two in five said it had a negative influence on their own enthusiasm for teaching, the report reads.

“Many teachers came into the profession because they wanted to make a difference and they believed they could make difference if they taught to the whole child,” said Rebecca Harper, president of San Bernardino Teachers Association.

“So when No Child Left Behind came in and minimized the amount of time teachers were allowed to spend on character, music and art it soured them on the profession.”

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